Eh? Whadijya Say?

I reported on Friday that I had messed up my taekwondo test, and so had not moved up a belt, moving up half a belt instead. In the time when tigers still smoked cigarettes, I remember my brother taking taekwondo lessons and moving up half a belt at a time, getting a little black stripe at the end of his belt when he stayed in the same color. Those were the days when instructors would push down on kids' shoulders while they were doing the splits, to make them go down further. Ouch.

Well. Either the teaching method has changed, or my taekwondo director is especially lenient, or I'm really, really good, because I didn't just NOT fail my test, I actually skipped a belt!

The problem: I heard the director say that both of us orange belts would now be ban dthi, dthi meaning belt and ban meaning half. So when I went to class yesterday, I was startled to see the assistant director coming toward me with a brown belt in his hand.

When I managed to splutter out that I thought I hadn't even moved up to green belt, much less brown, he said, "Oh, if you do really well, you get to go up two belts. And if you do really, really well, you get to move up three. And if you do really, really, REALLY well -- you still move up only three." He's a kidder, that Jin-lo.

I seriously thought the director had made a mistake, but I kept it to myself and felt a bit of a fraud as various other students congratulated me. In the same class period, the director used me as an example for one of the kicking exercises, so I felt very confused. I'd been convinced that I'd screwed up on Thursday during the test, and that I definitely wasn't going to be able to get a black belt before I left Korea (whenever that is). But here the director was all sunshine and compliments, so... what the ... ?

After class, I took the opportunity in the changing room to ask a black belt: "Uh, on Thursday, the instructor said I'd moved up ban dthi... I thought I hadn't even moved up one belt. What does ban dthi mean?"

She furrowed her brow at me. "Ban dthi? Ban...? Ohhhhh!" She smiled. "Bam dthi! It's another name for brown belt."

My turn to look quizzical: "But what's bam?"

"Bam... you know what bam is, right?" she asked. I nodded, yes, I know that bam means chestnut in Korean.

"Well, bam are brown, so sometimes that's what you call brown belt."

I suddenly got a huge grin on my face. "I thought I hadn't moved up at all!" I exclaimed.

She laughed. "You're doing so well, how could he not move you up?"

I think I might love taekwondo.

Now, for a dose of realism: I do think that the director may be slightly misguided in moving people up so fast. I've only been doing this for two months, and I'm about halfway to black belt already. Admittedly, the penultimate levels seem to take longer -- and getting a black belt is only the first step in, like, a 9-year process to becoming a master -- but I'm not sure that it's helpful to move someone like me up so fast -- I still feel very much like a beginner.

I realize that with the number of foreigners in his class, the director is being savvy -- foreigners generally don't stay long enough to really master the art, but if they didn't see themselves moving up, they might just leave the dojang (studio). On the other hand, if you have all these fairly unqualified black belts running around because you've moved them up so fast, isn't that kind of like grade inflation? You never know who really earned it.

On the other hand, I'm not about to return my brown belt for green.

Just remember, if someone says they're a black belt in taekwondo, don't forget to ask them what dan. Just scoring a black belt -- heck, I think I may be able to do that before leaving Korea.

Getting a black belt would be very gratifying, but ultimately, the reward is really in the journey in this case. The thing about taekwondo is that it may not be the most efficient form of martial art (as J used to point out), but the series of moves you have to learn for each level requires concentration and focus, and there's simply nothing else that can be on your mind when you do them.

I miss playing piano for the same reason -- you can't think of anything else when you're doing it. The stuff that weighs on my mind -- John's situation, my mother being alone in L.A., my aunt and uncle aging by their lonesomes in Tacoma, whether I'm going to go to law school, what my purpose in life is, whether I should find another job here, how I'm going to plan my next trip, if I'm currently offending or hurting anyone, when I'm going to write those thank you notes -- the raucous voices that ring so loudly in my personal Parliament have to zip it, and for an hour at a time, there's only me and this body, trying to kick, punch, whirl, and move the way the black belts do.

Kiahhh!